Designing a model of obstacles to the optimal performance of the supply chain of SMEs

The current research aims to study the impact of the effective variables on the supply chain performance of small and medium companies. In other words, the purpose of the current research is to identify the critical variables that affect the performance of the supply chain. This research is exploratory and descriptive-survey based in terms of execution. Data tools have been utilized to gather information and Cronbach’s alpha was above 0.7. To test the validity of the questions, the content validity method was employed based on the opinions of professionals, university professors, and experts. The statistical population in this research consists of the producers and exporters of small and medium firms, out of which 470 individuals were selected as samples through simple random sampling. The data was analyzed based on an exploratory factor analysis test and ultimately 9 factors of operational, supply, financial, product improvement, demand, governmental, environmental, social, and economic barriers were identified as the main barriers to supply chain performance. The results of exploratory factor analysis indicated that the 9 obtained factors can explain about 61.6% variance of all factors which is an acceptable rate. The first factor is the operational barrier, which is the most important factor with an extracted variance of 13.7; the second financial barrier interprets 11.3% of the total variance.